


By The Waters Of Leman

by althusserarien (ArmchairElvis)



Category: Sherlock Holmes & Related Fandoms, Sherlock Holmes (2009), Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
Genre: Multi, shkinkmeme
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-22
Updated: 2010-08-22
Packaged: 2017-10-11 05:13:25
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,173
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108795
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ArmchairElvis/pseuds/althusserarien
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p><i>Watson learned from Holmes. There is always something.</i> Four times Holmes is beaten, and one time Watson can do nothing.</p>
            </blockquote>





	By The Waters Of Leman

**Author's Note:**

> This story contains very dark themes: it has a major character death and explicit mentions of suicide and mental illness.
> 
> I wrote this for a challenge at the shkinkmeme Livejournal community. The theme was "mistakes". Unfortunately I didn't post it in time. Time management is not my strong point, heh.
> 
> And a huge thank you to **postcardmystery** for a superlative beta.

_"I have been beaten four times — three times by men, and once by a woman."_

**1.**   
The first time Holmes failed was before Watson knew him, so he only knows it through Holmes' (characteristically haughty) retelling. It still smarts, Watson can tell. There is something sharp in Holmes' rueful narrative, as if he is glad that he now knows better.

"The bloody woman kept her friendship with the groundskeeper from me," Holmes says, poking the stem of his pipe at his commonplace book with obvious displeasure.

"But surely you must have seen it when you interviewed him. Your notes are quite extensive." They are also incredibly messy — Watson is a better scribe.

Holmes nods, his eyes narrowed. "I thought it was her daughter. I was young -- and stupid."

Holmes keeps much more extensive records on his failures. While at the conclusion of the Drebber case he merely collected accounts from the daily newspapers, gleefully correcting them, he has simply _pages_ of records on the Simpson Diamond. Through newspaper reports and correspondence Watson traces its path through Europe.

The trail ends in Europe, two years after Holmes came to London. No doubt it was sold to a rich collector, someone who can afford to wait until their unique little souvenir cools down.

Holmes has even annotated a map of the continent, tracing the path of the jewel in crimson ink. He taps one long, nervous index finger at the map, the last page in his documentation of this case.

"That's where the trail finishes," Holmes says. "Vanished into thin air."

"What did you learn?" Watson asks, trying to steer the conversation from tired old ground, ground Holmes has obviously gone over before.

"To do better," Holmes says, and he thumps the book closed.

**2.**   
Watson is there, the second time. He's still too tired and unwell to even imagine going into practice, subsisting on an Army pension. It's bitter midwinter and his body aches in places it didn't, two years ago.

There is a tight, hot feeling in his leg, still not used to much exertion, as he trots three steps behind Holmes, over slick, icy streets. Holmes' entire upper body is straining forward with tension. After a while he glances back at Watson, shoots him an apologetic look and starts to run.

They're tramping through rooms that smell of rising damp, revolvers in hand, when Holmes whirls back around through a doorway, his hands firm at Watson's biceps, his voice insistent.

"Best if you wait outside, Doctor. Your nerves are still weak and there is… there is nothing you can do here." He's breathing hard.

Holmes pulls his tape measure from his pocket with a curious look on his face. He scrunches his eyes closed, opens them again, then goes back through the doorway. Watson waits at the door, dripping moisture on the bare floorboards, and then he goes outside.

A small terrace in Islington, the child's parents standing cowed behind the broad backs of the police, their faces pale with worry. Watson stands shoulder to shoulder with Lestrade as Holmes ducks through the front door, carrying a small bundle wrapped in a woolen blanket.

Holmes looks at Watson an instant before the mother cries out, and the terrible blankness in his grey eyes tells Watson the whole story. As Holmes treads carefully down the stairs, a foot clad in a tiny leather sandal falls through one edge of the blanket.

They find the animal who did it. He will hang, Holmes makes sure of that. He closes his file on this case with a savage brightness in his eyes. Then he lights a cigarette and goes to stand by the window, blowing an angry stream of smoke toward the glass.

"I should have gone to Islington first, after I discovered that was where the child had been taken. I should not have wasted time trying to work back to the source of the ransom note." His voice is low and bitter.

"You did what anybody would have done. Lestrade and I agreed that you were following the most logical path of action."

Holmes stalks to the fire and throws his cigarette end into it. "I am not _anybody_, Watson, and those parents did not employ just anybody to find their only son, they hired me."

Watson, sitting in his customary chair by the fire, stares at Holmes' back, the tense line of his thin shoulders.

"I'm sure Lord and Lady Turner understand-"

"—They do not _care_, Watson, because their lives are destroyed."

A curious sentiment, coming from a man who cares more about the answer than the people affected by it. Maybe failure makes Holmes more attuned to the emotional aftermath of the crime. Watson remembers the look on his face as he carried the dead child down the steps. On anyone else, Watson would have described that as pain.

**3.**   
Watson teases Holmes about Irene Adler a lot, mostly because it is one of the only topics guaranteed to produce a reaction in him. Maybe just a raised eyebrow or an irritable comeback, but a reaction nonetheless.

Holmes keeps only two photographs: a photo of a man and a woman in the high collars and frills of thirty years before, and the cabinet-size photo of Irene Adler that he got from the Crown Prince of Bohemia. The man and the woman are Holmes' parents, and why there are no newer, less stern-looking photographs of them Watson has never asked. That photograph sits high up on his bookshelf, partially obscured by a small pile of outdated copies of the Bradshaw's Monthly Railway Guide.

Adler's photo is always out: on Holmes' desk, flanked by retort stands and beakers, or propped against one of the teetering piles of books that pepper every surface in his room. Watson doesn't know why Holmes forces himself to remember her, until he reflects that Holmes might actually look favourably on her memory.

While Holmes did not exactly _trust_ Adler (he does not trust easily), he did underestimate her. That was his undoing. She choreographed everything perfectly: an innocent shrug, the steaming cup of tea at Holmes' elbow, the taste of the opium disguised with sugar. She even knew that he had a tendency to gulp at his tea greedily, especially on an empty stomach.

Holmes barely registered that his tea was far too sweet before he was face-first on the carpet. Irene Adler left with the fee Holmes had taken to track her down, and she left him with the hotel bill. There was something of the _femme fatale_ about her.

Being _bested_ has stayed with Holmes, and he documents Irene Adler's career better than he documents his own (of course, he has Watson to do that).

"I do hope nothing untoward happened while you were drooling in front of the fireplace at the _Grand_," Watson says as Holmes pastes yet another clipping (almost lovingly) into his Adler file.

"No," Holmes says, his face inscrutable. "That was before she drugged me."

Watson wonders what else she took from Holmes. It makes him think of the persistence of memory, the way Holmes' emotional sense is so much less developed than the rest of his intellect. When he loves, he loves simply.

**4.**   
A spar floating on the trough of a wave is all the revenge that John Openshaw has. That is all the fault of the weather, though. Watson sees the pages that Holmes covers in feverish writing, the faraway look in his grey eyes. He would hunt the gang to the end of the Earth, Watson knows that. Holmes is older, now. He knows better.

Watson is almost glad that the ship has left. Holmes has been working all day, in the feverish self-punishing mood that a failure brings. He would gladly fly down to the docks with handcuffs in hand, to bring the criminals in himself. And if one of his charges slipped and fell into the water, well. At least they would have a resolution.

**1.**   
It seems that everybody but Holmes makes the decision. "My brother is very unwell," Mycroft says to Watson when he pays a visit to the Diogenes Club. Watson is alone -- Holmes will not leave the rooms, preferring to stay in his darkened room and insist that he is _fine, thank you Watson_.

"This has happened before," Mycroft says, forgetting that while he has known his younger brother his whole life, Watson has been his closest friend for years. Watson was here last time, and the time before.

Maybe it is easy for Mycroft. He can look back on the ebb and flow of almost forty years. All Watson knows is the present, the terrible drawn look on his friend's face.

Mycroft writes a cheque for cash that they do not need (Holmes is wealthy now, wealthy enough to live in better rooms, but old habits die hard). As Watson turns to go Mycroft puts a meaty paw on his good shoulder.

"Do not blame yourself, doctor. This started a long time ago." Watson notices something like Holmes' old anger bloom in the brother's grey eyes, and then Mycroft turns back to the window overlooking Pall Mall.

"You must go," Mary says. "Take him somewhere to get better. A change of scene will do him good." She worries, in her own way. She wishes for the old Holmes back, the one who insulted her over afternoon tea whenever he visited Watson's house in Cavendish Place, leaving mud on the hall carpet and pipe tobacco on the mantlepiece. "He's been ill so long," she says, as she helps Watson with his overcoat.

Lestrade visits their rooms and gazes at Holmes' bedroom door, Holmes still abed at three in the afternoon.

"Holmes is indisposed," Watson says, feeling weary. Tired of making excuses. Tired of feeling as if Holmes' black mood is another presence in the room.

"I hope he feels better soon," Lestrade says, after a thoughtful pause. "Scotland Yard can scarcely do without a mind such as his," and Watson gets the feeling that Lestrade knows more than he lets on, that he has learned of Holmes' mind as he has learned of his methods.

The journey is long, and Watson feels as if he is shepherding Holmes from place to place. On the train to Bern, Holmes smiles weakly when Watson repeats an anecdote about a burglar who was caught because he wiggled through an overly small window when a guard dog attacked him, leaving behind a pair of trousers with a name tag inside. Apart from that, conversation is stilted. Watson talks, trying to fill the gaps, and Holmes stares everywhere, his grey eyes searching, downcast. He apologises a lot.

The cottage is quiet, the air clean and cool. Holmes smokes a great many cigarettes and gazes out toward the mountains that smudge the horizon.

"I fear that this black mood has beaten me this time, Watson. It has been such a long time."

"Nonsense," Watson says, as the skin on the back of his neck prickles. _Please_, he thinks, _please_. He would do anything to end this.

Three days later, in a field in south-western Switzerland, Sherlock Holmes walks out into the cold in his shirt-sleeves, turns his face to the wide grey sky, puts the barrel of Watson's service revolver in his mouth, and pulls the trigger. Watson is inside gathering some lunch together. He doesn't even know that Holmes is outside until he hears the shot, and for that he never forgives himself.

Watson had the gun for protection, the cartridges hidden inside the lining of his suitcase. Holmes' last great adversary is one that cannot be caught, one he could not defend himself from.

The letter is four pages long. Watson finds it in the pocket of Holmes' trousers. He reads as he kneels with Holmes' blood crusted under his fingernails, and he feels as if he might not be able to stand again, his grief is so unutterably _huge_. It is a weight that settles in his chest, making it hard even to draw breath.

Even with Mycroft's excellent German, they cannot find a priest who will do a service over the body. They return to England in full mourning, Holmes' violin the only piece of his luggage that remains. Mary sobs into Watson's chest. Lying beside her in bed, Watson curls awkwardly onto his side when he finds himself shaking uncontrollably. Mary wraps her arms around his shoulders and whispers soothingly into his ear. He is glad; he can no longer hear the gunshot when she does that.

When he and Mycroft stand in Holmes' rooms, so empty, so full of his presence, Watson apologises. He feels that it is something he should do.

"I'm sorry, Mycroft. I made a mistake. I should have--"

"There is nothing that you could have done, John." Mycroft's eyes shine. They can hear Mrs. Hudson sobbing in the next room.

Watson learned from Holmes. There is always something. But Holmes had very little understanding of the human heart.

**Author's Note:**

> Ho! Pretentious title from an Eliot poem! The title is from part III of [_The Waste Land_](http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/The_Waste_Land#The_Fire_Sermon), _The Fire Sermon_. _Leman_ is French for Lake Geneva.


End file.
